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Global COVID-19 death toll could hit two million before vaccine in wide use: WHO

25 September 2020 21:29 (UTC +04:00)

The global death toll from COVID-19 could double to 2 million before a successful vaccine is widely used and could be even higher without concerted action to curb the pandemic, an official at the World Health Organization said on Friday, APA reports quoting Reuters.

“Unless we do it (take concerted action) ... the number you speak about (2 million deaths) is not only imaginable, but sadly very likely,” Mike Ryan, head of the U.N. agency’s emergencies programme, told a briefing on Friday.

The number of deaths about nine months since the novel coronavirus was discovered in China is nearing 1 million.